Pictured: Erlend Hjelvik — Pictured: *Erlend Hjelvik*

To Hel and Back

Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media

As the rain fell on his home on the south-west coast of Norway, Erlend Hjelvik is speaking to SENSE in front of several mounted animal skulls – somewhat appropriate for a guy so captivated by Norse lore. He bought a house with his wife four years ago, and has been there ever since, surrounded by trees and nature. There are worse places to ride out a pandemic, particularly with a new musical endeavour keeping him busy. “For me, it’s been pretty easy. I have so much to do with the new band and everything. It’s been lots of work, especially here in Norway, where we’re putting the album out on our own label too, so there is extra work involved with that, so there’s no lack of things to do. I haven’t been able to sit around in my lazy pants and watch Netflix all day. It’s been a good thing for me in a way. It sucks that I haven’t been able to tour, but at least it’s given me some more time to just work on things that needed to be worked on.”

The new project, HJELVIK, is Erlend’s first musical outlet since leaving KVELERTAK in 2018, after more than a decade at the helm. Generating fierce buzz for their black ‘n’ roll sound – think huge, fuzzed-out 70s rock riffs and icy black metal vocals – KVELERTAK were enormously successful, opening for METALLICA and GHOST. When asked why he left, Erlend is diplomatic, but he definitely doesn’t sound sad about it. “Yeah, I’m happy to leave it in the past. I don’t want to point fingers or blame anyone. I just figured I would be better off on my own, so I just decided to leave it behind. They can keep doing what they want to do, and I can do what I want to do. It worked out best for everyone.”

KVELERTAK have pushed on, recruiting new vocalist Ivar Nikolaisen and releasing a new album Splid in February. Is it strange seeing your old band with a new singer? I theorise it would be like seeing your ex with a new partner. Erlend smiles. “It is like that. I’m not going to any shows, and I haven’t been listening to the album. Whatever. It would just feel strange in a way, because I spent so much of my life in the band. I started it, and I spent twelve years investing everything in it, so it’s weird for that reason.”

The new project HJELVIK unleashed its debut LP Welcome to Hel late last month. Completed by guitarist Rob Steinway, bassist Alexis Lieu and with Kevin Foley behind the kit, the band recorded with Justin Phelps in Portland, Oregon. While definitely pushing in more of a metal direction than his former band, HJELVIK definitely shares some traits with KVELERTAK. “I started with my old band, and I was part of creating that sound, so I think it’s only natural that it reminds you of my old band as well. I can’t hide who I am. Especially [since] the vocals are a big part of the sound, so it’s natural to get compared. I definitely feel that this is more metal.”

The conversation about vocals leads me to ask about his favourite vocalists. “I would definitely say Ozzy Osbourne and Danzig are probably my favourites. Then there’s Nattefrost, who is a Norwegian black metal singer from a band named CARPATHIAN FOREST … He has a really cool voice. He has a punk tinge to it, while still having very black metal vocals. I think that’s really good. I’d say those are my top three.”

I ask Erlend who he thinks the current generation of metalheads will be holding up as their genre figureheads when they’re in their thirties and beyond. Who will be their Ozzy, their Danzig? “I’ve been wondering that too. I guess the best bet these days are probably GHOST. I guess they are one of the biggest bands of the younger generation I would probably say. I feel like they have the best chance of being the next Ozzy Osbourne or IRON MAIDEN or METALLICA or whatever. They’re pretty much there already … I thought KVELERTAK blew up pretty quickly when we started in 2010, and GHOST started at the same time. I remember playing a metal festival with them. They played after us. It was us, and then ACCEPT played, and then everyone left after ACCEPT played, and there was like ten people left in the audience, and then GHOST came onstage. So it was only ten people watching, which was really strange because the show was awesome. This was right after their first album had come out. And then over the course of the summer, I saw them at festivals, and the crowd just kept growing … It was a really fast rise.”

Speaking of surprises, when I asked Erlend about some of the albums that blew his mind when he was younger, I was somewhat caught off guard by his first answer. “I think THE PRODIGY [was] my first meeting with “hard” music – that’s what I would call it.” Seeing the much-missed vocalist Keith Flynt headbanging in a tunnel in the Firestarter video made an indelible impression on the future front-man when he was nine years old. “It just blew me away. That was my favourite band for a few years. I think Fat of the Land and Music for the Jilted Generation are still pretty cool. There are some cool riffs on there too … I got to see them live, maybe six years ago. That was pretty cool too actually. They were really intense live. It just kind of made me wish I had some ecstasy or something.” [Laughs] “Then I got into METALLICA when I was twelve or thirteen, because that’s what all the guys in my class were into at school. Load and Reload were the popular albums of the day, and that led me into stuff like MARILYN MANSON and SLIPKNOT and stuff like that, and then I got into DIMMU BORGIR and those Norwegian bands … IMMORTAL, CRADLE OF FILTH … and it just snowballed into getting into real Norwegian black metal, and here we are!” [Laughs]

When describing the unholy din contained on Welcome to Hel, he settles on “blackened Viking heavy metal”, and it’s a pretty apt description, particularly after you witness the blood-splattered video for North Tsar, featuring swordfights, wolves and a particularly startling depiction of the “blood eagle.” With its desaturated colour palette and gothic overtones, it’s worth noting that there are censored and uncensored versions of the video available on Youtube. We won’t tell you which one to watch. Wait, yes, we will – watch the uncensored one, it’s hardcore.

Erlend explained what Norse mythology means to him. “One of the most fascinating things to me is the cycles … There is a lot of focus on death and rebirth. I like that aspect. When someone dies, they always get reborn … There’s a lot of rebirth in the stories, even the Ragnarok stories, and the whole Viking mentality in general. They named their kids after their grandfathers, and that’s how the grandfather gets reborn. I think that’s an aspect that’s fascinating, and one of the reasons why I wrote about Ragnarok and Hell a lot of this album, because I feel like I’m closing one chapter of my life with leaving my old band, and I’m starting a new one with HJELVIK.”

Life. Death. Rebirth. Welcome to Hel.